Spot Bitcoin ETFs Lose $469 Million as the Outflow Streak Reaches Six Weeks

US spot bitcoin ETFs shed a net $469.1 million on Wednesday after $113.8 million on Tuesday, ending a brief lull in redemptions. Bitcoin fell to a two-week low on Tuesday, a move Bloomberg's headline attributed to a sell-off in technology stocks; the body of that report was behind a paywall and could not be checked. The dollar traded at a seven-month high. Counting the two sessions against the $5.94 billion CoinDesk tallied for the streak through last week puts it at roughly $6.5 billion. That arithmetic excludes Monday, for which no figure was available.

The lull that did not last

Last week had looked like the pressure easing. Weekly redemptions slowed to $228 million, the first week under $1 billion in five, CoinDesk noted on Monday, and bitcoin held $63,000 into the start of this week. Two sessions undid that. Wednesday's figure alone was more than double the whole of last week. Six consecutive weeks of net selling is now the length of the run.

Rates, not oil

The driver has changed. Through the spring the market traded on energy prices; by this week the two-year Treasury yield was at 4.21%, its highest since February 2025, even as oil had fallen about a fifth from its highs. A week after the Federal Reserve's first meeting under its new chair produced a projection of at least one hike by year-end from nine of eighteen officials, the bond market is pricing the same thing. Bitcoin has not traded as a hedge against that. It has moved with technology stocks, and technology stocks were what sold on Tuesday.

The inflation reading due later this week will test that. The consensus forecast for core PCE, the measure the Fed prefers, is a rise of 0.37% on the month and 3.4% on the year, which would be the highest annual figure since May 2024. A print at or above that locks in the hawkish reading of last week's projections. A miss would be the first soft data point in a month, and the first thing the ETF sellers have had to reconsider.

How the streak compares

When the run was thirteen sessions old on 3 June it had cost the funds $4.37 billion and taken their combined assets from $104.29 billion in mid-May to $82.83 billion. Three weeks on, the dollar total has grown by roughly half again while the daily pace has been uneven: a single inflow day of $85.8 million on 12 June, then a slow week, then Wednesday. The pattern is not a steady drain. It is a series of shocks with pauses between them.

The week's other news did not help sentiment. The Ethereum Foundation announced on Tuesday that it had cut 54 staff and about 40% of its 2026 budget, and the Bank of England set a temporary £40 billion issuance cap on systemic sterling stablecoins on Monday. Neither moved bitcoin directly. Both fed a week in which the industry's own institutions were retrenching while the funds that hold its flagship asset were paying out.

Friday's expiry

Friday brings the monthly options expiry on Deribit, the largest venue for bitcoin options, and positioning into it will be watched more closely than usual after two days like these. The other number to watch is Thursday's ETF tape. A third straight day above $100 million of redemptions would make Wednesday's figure look like a trend rather than an outlier. A pause would make the six-week streak look, again, like it might be ending. It has looked that way before.